Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Poetry (and Everything Else), but Were Afraid to Ask.

August 13, 2016

The Journal of Charles Ally, Part Six

Friday, 18th, Cara has found me, there was a postcard waiting for me:

"I am coming,

"Cara"

I tried to phone her from the gas station, but there was no answer. I tried several times, throughout the morning. I want no visitors. Too upset to eat at noon, I went to sit among the books, and that helped.

The center of quiet is the upstairs hall library. The house settles into itself there, and I can think. For a while I sat and looked out of the window at the rain — there was fine weather the last two days, of course, while I sat at the typewriter. My eyes turned from the rain and settled on the Daemonologia Sacra of Gilpin. That is a hateful book. I took down vol. xiii of Uncle John's 1836 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana and looked up the entry on witchcraft:

WITCH, WITCHCRAFT. A witch is a person who has acquired supernatural power by entering into a compact with evil spirits. In this sense of the word, the notions of witchcraft are essentially of modern origin, being entirely distinct from the superstitions of the ancients concerning the magical powers of the enchantments of their sorcerers. (See magic.) The term witch occurs, indeed, in our version of the Scriptures, according to which, the law of Moses is, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus, xxii, 18); but, besides that many commentators believe the Hebrew term charasp, here translated witch, should be rendered poisoner, there is nothing to indicate any infernal league between the Hebrew sorceress end diabolical powers, as is the distinctive mark of modern witchcraft. Trafficking with idols, using charms, invocations, &c., seem to constitute the crime of witchcraft, so often referred to in the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament.

Among the early Christians, the belief in the active agency of the spirit of evil in human affairs, became more fully developed than it had previously been; and it has been a familiar notion with Christian writers, from an early period, that the gods of the ancients were actually wicked spirits, who had led the nations astray from God, and blinded them to destroy them. Hence they have attributed to the heathen oracles the character of prophecy, but ascribed their prophetic powers to the devil; and it is well known that the Sibyline oracles have been quoted, by Christian theologians, in proof of the divine character of the Savior. "There appears nothing," says Sir W. Scott (Demonology and Witchcraft) "inconsistent in the faith of those, who, believing that, in the elder time, fiends end demons were permitted an enlarged degree of power in uttering predictions, may also give credit to the proposition, that, at the divine advent, that power was restrained, the oracles silenced, and those demons who had aped the divinity of the place, were driven from their abode on earth, honored as it was by a guest so awful."

I suppose now we would have to spell that word aweful or awe-full to get the meaning right.

The opinion here alluded to is the commonly-received opinion that the heathen oracles were struck silent at the time of the coming of Jesus Christ (see Demon, and Devil.)

At this point there is a footnote:

In Brown's Dictionary of the Holy Bible (fifth edition, Edinburgh, 1807), it is said that "A witch is a woman that has dealing with Satan; that such persons are among men is abundantly plain from Scripture, and that they ought to be put to death. It is plain, however, that great caution is necessary in the detection of the guilty, and in punishing them, lest the innocent suffer."

This work was republished in Albany in 1816! Man — each man — is of two minds — the mind of darkness, and the mind of light; Gilpin vs. Ferguson, Blackstone vs. Blackstone. And in all the ages Ouroboros turns, with the sun and the moon, through the days and the years; through mind and spirit. One is born, and he takes his chances with himself and the spin of the coin in the world.

Uncle John Putnam seems to have been something of a scholar with regard to the doings at Salem, and the involvement of the Putnam clan — in a drawer of the combination safe is a notebook titled, simply, Salem. I've leafed through it, and there are copious notes written in a rather cramped calligraphy, which is hard to make out.

I have tried to call Cara again — still no answer. There are no swifts in the chimney, but the noises continue.

This morning Catch returned. When I awoke, he was lying on my chest, staring at me. When I got out of bed I stepped on a mouse he had caught and brought in.

I sense a deterioration in The Book of the Black Heart.

Saturday, 19th. It was a mild morning with some high clouds, but a good deal of sun. I happened to be in the kitchen when Cara drove into the dooryard between the elms. She blew her horn twice and got out. I met her at the door.

"Hello, Charles," she said. She stood on the doorstep dressed in a Iight jacket-sweater and s miniskirt. She hadn't grown older in the two years since she'd left campus, only more mature. I'd forgotten the depth of her gray eyes, and how dark her hair was. She wore it long. It was like a graceful, old-fashioned frame on an oval picture. She wore no make-up, nor needed any.

I swung open the screen door and held it for her. "You shouldn't have come. I tried to call you."

When she was inside she turned and faced me, still smiling. "That's why I wasn't home. But I got the right message, whether you know it or not, Charles. It'll take a little time for you to dig it." Her smile faded into a fraudulent pout. "What a hell. of a way to greet a girl. You haven't even said hello yet. It's been two years, but we're still friends, aren't we?"

She stepped up to me and kissed me. I had been forgetting. When she was through, she pushed away. "That's enough for now." She touched her hair end smoothened her sweater, then she laughed and bent down.

"Who's this great, silky black thing?" She had Catch the cat in her arms, purring. He had been rubbing against our ankles as we stood. "You're not still Calling him Catch, are you?" I nodded. "What an awful name. Can't we think of something else?" She petted him in long, voluptuous strokes as he settled in the crook of her arm against her bosom.

"I meant it when I said you shouldn't have come, Cara. I'm trying to write and get my head together." She ignored me.

"How about showing me the house?"

She went through the dining room and into the living room where I had a small. fire going. Cara put Catch down, and he went over to lie near the hearth.

"It's a lovely place, Charles, but it's a mess." We sat down in armchairs, and she looked straight at me. "I'm staying," she said.

We were quiet for a while. Then I asked what about her grad work? She shrugged.

"I finished my master's in June." Her hand moved slowly up and down the arm of the Morris chair as she spoke. "I've been working since, and I have some money...." She leaned forward. "Don't worry about that, Charles. I won't be a burden — not that kind, anyway. I'm taking a year off to think. I'm not sure I want a doctorate in horticulture — or anything else." She

sighed and settled back. "I think I want you, Charles. When I heard you had left Norine, I decided to come and find out about us. We never really had a chance, you know." Her eyes were nearly closed.

I thought of asking her how she'd found out about my leaving, but we had many mutual friends. It didn't matter. It didn't occur to me until much later to inquire how she had found out about the farm, and by that time she was asleep. It was late.

Finally I said, "I'm glad you've come." She got up, came over, and leaned to kiss me. Then she straightened, took my hand, and tugged. I got up;

We went upstairs. I showed her the hall library, the small bedroom, my bedroom, and the one across from mine, just above the parlor.

"It's very nice," she said, looking around. There was a tall standing mirror in one corner, and we stood looking at each other in it. I began to fall through the glass into her eyes.

It happened very slowly. She unbuttoned her sweater; she wore nothing underneath. I. watched my fingers move to undo her skirt, which fell in the mirror. My hands rose to her breasts, and I squeezed the nipples gently.

Cara bent a little to get rid of her lingerie, and I could feel her buttocks pressing against me.

When she rose, she turned and began to work at my clothes. Her breath came in warm bursts, but I felt like a statue. She pulled me to the bed and made love to me, her hands stroking me. I tried to respond.

I gave up at last and lay back against the pillow. Cara sat beside me, moving her hand in long strokes down from my chest, over my stomach, to the broken fount. There was an amused, brooding look in her eyes as she followed the movements of her hand, which stopped at last near my penis. "So this is whet Norine has done to you, Charles." She bent down and brushed the nipple of her left breast along my lips. "You're charged with guilt, Charles. I think I can help you, but it may take some time. Do I sleep with you in your room?"

I shook my head.

"Then I'll stay here."

She took my penis between two fingers. "Poor little worm," she said, and bent down to kiss it. I felt her tongue at the core, touching end exploring, but I could do nothing. "Poor little worm," she said again. "It's empty." And she let it fall.

We dressed, I brought in her things. While she was settling in, I went to the library to find what I could.

Book I, Vol. I of A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery by W. Smellie, M. D., Edinburgh: C. Eliot, 1784, Chap. ii; "Of the external and internal Parts of Generation proper to women, Sect. 1, The external Parts and vagina." I read a description of the female sexual parts and was interested to read that,

On each side of the Meatus Urinarius are two small. lacunae or openings, the tubes of which, ending in a kind of sacculus, come from the prostrate gland:" — that's what the book says, the prostrate gland. Very

fitting (no Pun intended) — the male has a prostate, and the woman has a prostrate gland. I also read that "The upper end of the Vagina is joined to the circumference of the lips-of the Os Uteri, Which resemble the mouth of a puppy, or tench; and a thin expansion of this membrane, being reflected inwards, covers the exterior of these lips, which in virgins are smooth and of an oval form.

Before going on, I looked up the word tench in Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, in miniature, to which are added, An Alphabetical Account of the Heathen Deities, and a Copious Chronological Table of remarkable Events, Discoveries, and Inventions, by the Rev. Joseph Hamilton, M. A., Third American Edition, Boston: West & Blake, 1810:

"Tench, s. a river or pond fish."

-

I continue to derive great satisfaction from these old books. It's late; Cara is asleep; Catch is telling me to come to bed.

Comments

The Journal of Charles Ally, Part Six

Friday, 18th, Cara has found me, there was a postcard waiting for me:

"I am coming,

"Cara"

I tried to phone her from the gas station, but there was no answer. I tried several times, throughout the morning. I want no visitors. Too upset to eat at noon, I went to sit among the books, and that helped.

The center of quiet is the upstairs hall library. The house settles into itself there, and I can think. For a while I sat and looked out of the window at the rain — there was fine weather the last two days, of course, while I sat at the typewriter. My eyes turned from the rain and settled on the Daemonologia Sacra of Gilpin. That is a hateful book. I took down vol. xiii of Uncle John's 1836 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana and looked up the entry on witchcraft:

WITCH, WITCHCRAFT. A witch is a person who has acquired supernatural power by entering into a compact with evil spirits. In this sense of the word, the notions of witchcraft are essentially of modern origin, being entirely distinct from the superstitions of the ancients concerning the magical powers of the enchantments of their sorcerers. (See magic.) The term witch occurs, indeed, in our version of the Scriptures, according to which, the law of Moses is, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus, xxii, 18); but, besides that many commentators believe the Hebrew term charasp, here translated witch, should be rendered poisoner, there is nothing to indicate any infernal league between the Hebrew sorceress end diabolical powers, as is the distinctive mark of modern witchcraft. Trafficking with idols, using charms, invocations, &c., seem to constitute the crime of witchcraft, so often referred to in the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament.

Among the early Christians, the belief in the active agency of the spirit of evil in human affairs, became more fully developed than it had previously been; and it has been a familiar notion with Christian writers, from an early period, that the gods of the ancients were actually wicked spirits, who had led the nations astray from God, and blinded them to destroy them. Hence they have attributed to the heathen oracles the character of prophecy, but ascribed their prophetic powers to the devil; and it is well known that the Sibyline oracles have been quoted, by Christian theologians, in proof of the divine character of the Savior. "There appears nothing," says Sir W. Scott (Demonology and Witchcraft) "inconsistent in the faith of those, who, believing that, in the elder time, fiends end demons were permitted an enlarged degree of power in uttering predictions, may also give credit to the proposition, that, at the divine advent, that power was restrained, the oracles silenced, and those demons who had aped the divinity of the place, were driven from their abode on earth, honored as it was by a guest so awful."

I suppose now we would have to spell that word aweful or awe-full to get the meaning right.

The opinion here alluded to is the commonly-received opinion that the heathen oracles were struck silent at the time of the coming of Jesus Christ (see Demon, and Devil.)

At this point there is a footnote:

In Brown's Dictionary of the Holy Bible (fifth edition, Edinburgh, 1807), it is said that "A witch is a woman that has dealing with Satan; that such persons are among men is abundantly plain from Scripture, and that they ought to be put to death. It is plain, however, that great caution is necessary in the detection of the guilty, and in punishing them, lest the innocent suffer."

This work was republished in Albany in 1816! Man — each man — is of two minds — the mind of darkness, and the mind of light; Gilpin vs. Ferguson, Blackstone vs. Blackstone. And in all the ages Ouroboros turns, with the sun and the moon, through the days and the years; through mind and spirit. One is born, and he takes his chances with himself and the spin of the coin in the world.

Uncle John Putnam seems to have been something of a scholar with regard to the doings at Salem, and the involvement of the Putnam clan — in a drawer of the combination safe is a notebook titled, simply, Salem. I've leafed through it, and there are copious notes written in a rather cramped calligraphy, which is hard to make out.

I have tried to call Cara again — still no answer. There are no swifts in the chimney, but the noises continue.

This morning Catch returned. When I awoke, he was lying on my chest, staring at me. When I got out of bed I stepped on a mouse he had caught and brought in.

I sense a deterioration in The Book of the Black Heart.

Saturday, 19th. It was a mild morning with some high clouds, but a good deal of sun. I happened to be in the kitchen when Cara drove into the dooryard between the elms. She blew her horn twice and got out. I met her at the door.

"Hello, Charles," she said. She stood on the doorstep dressed in a Iight jacket-sweater and s miniskirt. She hadn't grown older in the two years since she'd left campus, only more mature. I'd forgotten the depth of her gray eyes, and how dark her hair was. She wore it long. It was like a graceful, old-fashioned frame on an oval picture. She wore no make-up, nor needed any.

I swung open the screen door and held it for her. "You shouldn't have come. I tried to call you."

When she was inside she turned and faced me, still smiling. "That's why I wasn't home. But I got the right message, whether you know it or not, Charles. It'll take a little time for you to dig it." Her smile faded into a fraudulent pout. "What a hell. of a way to greet a girl. You haven't even said hello yet. It's been two years, but we're still friends, aren't we?"

She stepped up to me and kissed me. I had been forgetting. When she was through, she pushed away. "That's enough for now." She touched her hair end smoothened her sweater, then she laughed and bent down.

"Who's this great, silky black thing?" She had Catch the cat in her arms, purring. He had been rubbing against our ankles as we stood. "You're not still Calling him Catch, are you?" I nodded. "What an awful name. Can't we think of something else?" She petted him in long, voluptuous strokes as he settled in the crook of her arm against her bosom.

"I meant it when I said you shouldn't have come, Cara. I'm trying to write and get my head together." She ignored me.

"How about showing me the house?"

She went through the dining room and into the living room where I had a small. fire going. Cara put Catch down, and he went over to lie near the hearth.

"It's a lovely place, Charles, but it's a mess." We sat down in armchairs, and she looked straight at me. "I'm staying," she said.

We were quiet for a while. Then I asked what about her grad work? She shrugged.

"I finished my master's in June." Her hand moved slowly up and down the arm of the Morris chair as she spoke. "I've been working since, and I have some money...." She leaned forward. "Don't worry about that, Charles. I won't be a burden — not that kind, anyway. I'm taking a year off to think. I'm not sure I want a doctorate in horticulture — or anything else." She

sighed and settled back. "I think I want you, Charles. When I heard you had left Norine, I decided to come and find out about us. We never really had a chance, you know." Her eyes were nearly closed.

I thought of asking her how she'd found out about my leaving, but we had many mutual friends. It didn't matter. It didn't occur to me until much later to inquire how she had found out about the farm, and by that time she was asleep. It was late.

Finally I said, "I'm glad you've come." She got up, came over, and leaned to kiss me. Then she straightened, took my hand, and tugged. I got up;

We went upstairs. I showed her the hall library, the small bedroom, my bedroom, and the one across from mine, just above the parlor.

"It's very nice," she said, looking around. There was a tall standing mirror in one corner, and we stood looking at each other in it. I began to fall through the glass into her eyes.

It happened very slowly. She unbuttoned her sweater; she wore nothing underneath. I. watched my fingers move to undo her skirt, which fell in the mirror. My hands rose to her breasts, and I squeezed the nipples gently.

Cara bent a little to get rid of her lingerie, and I could feel her buttocks pressing against me.

When she rose, she turned and began to work at my clothes. Her breath came in warm bursts, but I felt like a statue. She pulled me to the bed and made love to me, her hands stroking me. I tried to respond.

I gave up at last and lay back against the pillow. Cara sat beside me, moving her hand in long strokes down from my chest, over my stomach, to the broken fount. There was an amused, brooding look in her eyes as she followed the movements of her hand, which stopped at last near my penis. "So this is whet Norine has done to you, Charles." She bent down and brushed the nipple of her left breast along my lips. "You're charged with guilt, Charles. I think I can help you, but it may take some time. Do I sleep with you in your room?"

I shook my head.

"Then I'll stay here."

She took my penis between two fingers. "Poor little worm," she said, and bent down to kiss it. I felt her tongue at the core, touching end exploring, but I could do nothing. "Poor little worm," she said again. "It's empty." And she let it fall.

We dressed, I brought in her things. While she was settling in, I went to the library to find what I could.

Book I, Vol. I of A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery by W. Smellie, M. D., Edinburgh: C. Eliot, 1784, Chap. ii; "Of the external and internal Parts of Generation proper to women, Sect. 1, The external Parts and vagina." I read a description of the female sexual parts and was interested to read that,

On each side of the Meatus Urinarius are two small. lacunae or openings, the tubes of which, ending in a kind of sacculus, come from the prostrate gland:" — that's what the book says, the prostrate gland. Very

fitting (no Pun intended) — the male has a prostate, and the woman has a prostrate gland. I also read that "The upper end of the Vagina is joined to the circumference of the lips-of the Os Uteri, Which resemble the mouth of a puppy, or tench; and a thin expansion of this membrane, being reflected inwards, covers the exterior of these lips, which in virgins are smooth and of an oval form.

Before going on, I looked up the word tench in Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, in miniature, to which are added, An Alphabetical Account of the Heathen Deities, and a Copious Chronological Table of remarkable Events, Discoveries, and Inventions, by the Rev. Joseph Hamilton, M. A., Third American Edition, Boston: West & Blake, 1810:

"Tench, s. a river or pond fish."

-

I continue to derive great satisfaction from these old books. It's late; Cara is asleep; Catch is telling me to come to bed.

The Virginia Quarterly Review"The Mutable Past," a memoir collected in FANTASEERS, A BOOK OF MEMORIES by Lewis Turco of growing up in the 1950s in Meriden, Connecticut, (Scotsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005).

The Tower JournalTwo short stories, "The Demon in the Tree" and "The Substitute Wife," in the spring 2009 issue of Tower Journal.

The Tower JournalMemoir, “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World,” Spring-Summer 2010.

The Michigan Quarterly ReviewThis is the first terzanelle ever published, in "The Michigan Quarterly Review" in 1965. It has been gathered in THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF LEWIS TURCO/WESLI COURT, 1953-2004 (www.StarCloudPress.com).

The Gawain PoetAn essay on the putative medieval author of "Gawain and the Green Knight" in the summer 2010 issue of Per Contra.